Mas­sage Ther­a­pists’ As­so­ci­a­tion

The key to mas­sage ther­apy is find­ing your niche market

Mas­sage ther­apy has al­ways been a part of Olivier Fli­botte’s life. Be­tween his mother and other close rel­a­tives be­ing in­volved in the ther­a­peu­tic field, for him, it was just a nat­u­ral fit. He was al­ways able to see first hand how ef­fec­tive mas­sage ther­apy can be, and how re­ward­ing it can be as a ca­reer.

With his bach­e­lor’s de­gree in psy­chol­ogy and busi­ness, he deeply un­der­stands the mind­body con­nec­tion to the prac­tice. To be­come a reg­is­tered mas­sage ther­a­pist, Olivier also needed to ob­tain a mas­sage ther­apy di­ploma that met the re­quire­ments of MTANS, the Mas­sage Ther­a­pists’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Nova Sco­tia.

“As chal­leng­ing as it may be, you just need to em­brace how all of this will play a role in help­ing the pa­tients get bet­ter, and in the end it will make you a more com­pe­tent health care pro­fes­sional,” says Olivier. Along with par­tic­i­pat­ing in spe­cialty clin­ics, the pro­gram throws you into the sci­ences, mas­ter­ing ma­te­rial such as neu­roanatomy and patho­phys­i­ol­ogy.

Mas­sage ther­apy is a ca­reer for the healthori­ented and those seek­ing to help oth­ers. Olivier adds that along with pro­vid­ing ef­fec­tive treat­ments, and hav­ing an out­stand­ing knowl­edge of anatomy, the key to suc­cess in the field is find­ing your niche market. One way in which Olivier dif­fer­en­ti­ates him­self is by be­ing flu­ently bilin­gual in English and French, en­abling him to serve the grow­ing fran­co­phone com­mu­nity in Hal­i­fax.

Ul­ti­mately, Olivier says, “It’s cru­cial to lis­ten to your pa­tients, and give them what they ask for. That, plus the self-care of the ther­a­pist, is fun­da­men­tal for a long and suc­cess­ful ca­reer.”